


In My Arms

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gen, Mentioned Batfamily - Freeform, Platonic Cuddling, Protective Bruce Wayne, Soft Bruce Wayne, Time Travel, how many different ways can I say this is the softest fluff to ever fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 18:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20728655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could change. Those were the rules of the past. Besides, babies cried all the time, even if this was less a cry and more of an angry wail from a little one pushed past its limits.But still. He should have been on his way.He likely would have been, had this been a different home.





	In My Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts).

Bruce absolutely should not have been at this party.

Technically, it was a fundraiser. Technically, he was invited. Un-technically, he was breaking every rule he had ever created just by stepping foot in the building.

Find the time traveler. Fix the timeline. Go home. Maybe not an easy set of to-dos, but a _simple_ set nonetheless. A _complete_ set. Nowhere was there listed an option to join a gathering of Gotham’s elite.

Technically—he was back to this again—Bruce reasoned that he wasn’t _in_ the party but several corridors away. He had been entering in home coordinates into his wristwatch, preparing for the leap back, when the crying filtered through from down the hall.

There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could change. Those were the rules of the past. Besides, babies cried all the time, even if this was less a cry and more of an angry wail from a little one pushed past its limits.

But still. He should have been on his way.

He likely would have been, had this been a different home.

Bruce edged down the wallpapered hallway, tucking in his shirt and wiping the sweat from his brow as he went. His appearance probably wouldn’t matter, because he didn’t intend to be seen, but it was best to be prepared. Definitely shouldn’t be seen. It went against protocol. His _own_ protocol that he had written for the League, for his own family—

A girl no older than sixteen stood in the center of the nursery. She paced back and forth, bouncing slightly on her toes as she went. The child in her arms was not mollified, and even from his position in the doorway, Bruce could read the mounting stress on the girl’s face.

He should walk away. She hadn’t seen him, _shouldn’t_ see him. She would find a way to quiet the baby, and a few tears wouldn’t cause irrevocable damage. There was no reason for him to—

“Miss? Is everything alright?”

_Bruce Thomas, you idiot._

The girl whirled, brown ponytail swinging behind her, and let out a high, anxious laugh. “Oh! Hi. Yes. I think he’s teething? The normal nanny has the night off and I can’t—Sorry, is he being too loud? Sorry, I’m trying to get him down for the night, but he won’t—“

“Would you like me to try?”

It was like some alternate force had taken possession of his mouth. He shouldn’t be interacting with anyone, especially not here. Besides, he was a strange man offering to take a child from a hired babysitter. This would not end well. This could NOT—

“Would you?”

_What._

The babysitter was already moving toward him. She continued to bounce with each step, like a dancer in the middle of a song, and something about the unnatural movement made Bruce feel advanced upon. The baby continued to wail.

“Thank you so so much,” she babbled as she untucked the squalling infant from her arms. “I haven’t had any dinner because he won’t stop crying and I have to pee _so bad._ I promise I’ll only be like ten minutes maybe fifteen thank you thank you—“

And then she was gone, no more than a brief flash of a swinging ponytail, leaving Bruce alone with a baby in his arms.

A baby. As if this were just some random child, some nameless squaller of a proto-human.

Bruce’s lips moved soundlessly for a moment, throat suddenly dry and tight.

“Tim.”

The name was scratchy, finely strung like a tripwire, and lost beneath the wails.

Bruce had very little of his children from before they had come into his life. Dick had been parceled to the Manor with a few worn suitcases and flashes of a childhood captured as posters and training videos. Life for the Graysons had happened between somersaults. Out of respect for his son’s privacy, Bruce had never watched those videos without invitation, leaving him with only brief glimpses of a balding little baby growing into impish childhood.

Jason had come with even less, no more than a battered shoebox of possessions, including a few faded disposable camera snaps, each carefully dated in neat block letters on the back. Bruce had flipped through that box often in the years following Ethiopia, the deliberate, chosen pain its own form of relief. 

Cass had been a ghost.

Damian had come with the most, though his files were clinical and detached. They were concerned with the growth of the boy—height, weight, illnesses, competencies—and not the boy himself. Still, Bruce found himself marveling over the shots of that tiny creature, their composition so different from that of his own baby photos, but the contents so similar.

Bruce had had to search for Tim. The Drake house had photos, carefully composed, inherently awkward family portraits decorating various surfaces. They had seemed deliberately spaced, Bruce wagered by an interior decorator, and never showed a Tim that Bruce knew. School photos, researched and quietly pulled via Bruce’s power as guardian, were little better. The bright-eyed, fast-talking boy Bruce had come to love had appeared briefly in those early photos, then quickly subsided into a bow-shouldered kid with averted eyes.

Even if he’d had a library of photo albums, nothing could have prepared Bruce for this.

Tim was roughly six months old. He had a thin layer of dark hair swept over a skull that bobbled precariously as he tipped his head back and raged. He was loud. His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red, verging on purple, and his tiny fists shook.

He was beautiful.

Bruce swallowed hard and tried again. “Tim.”

He began to rock, a slower, less frantic counterpart to the babysitter’s earlier rhythm. Tim screamed.

“Hey. Hey, hey. Shhhhh.” Bruce thumbed away a fat tear as it trickled down the child’s face, then nearly lost his breath as Tim turned his head and made eye contact for the first time.

_Hi,_ came the whisper from deep beneath his ribs. _I know you._

Tim didn’t stop screaming. If anything, he grew louder now that he had a new, direct target for his frustrations.

“I hear you,” Bruce assured him as he began to pace the room. “It’s alright, sweetheart, I hear you.”

He cupped the back of Tim’s head and stroked the soft, downy strands as he continued to walk. Babies weren’t wholly unfamiliar to Bruce, but neither were they a subject in which he could claim expertise. He had missed the babyhood of all of his children, every last one of them.

Bruce continued to talk to Tim, murmuring whatever reassurances popped into his head in a voice he could feel deep in his own chest. Eventually, the words slowed and lost their features to become a melodic hum. The angry screeches lessened to hiccuping cries before fading away to little chirps of discontent and nothing more.

Thinking he’d gotten Tim to sleep, Bruce turned to take him to the crib, but passed a mirror on the way. Wide blue eyes stared back, reflected from the tiny head resting on his shoulder.

Bruce should have kept walking for the crib, deposited Tim, and returned home. Instead, he changed course and bent creaking knees to settle in the rocking chair next to the crib. As soon as he sat, the baby braced his hands against Bruce’s shoulder and pushed back, small body wobbling as he arched his back to get the distance needed to study Bruce’s face.

Bruce couldn’t help the smile that spread and spread across his face like warm honey on toast. “Hey, Tim. Hi. Hi, sweetheart.”

Tim wobbled again, then fixed that piercing stare on Bruce’s face with a curiosity Bruce hadn’t expected from someone so small. An oversight. This was Tim, after all.

“You don’t know me yet. We haven’t met,” Bruce murmured. “Not yet. I wish we had.”

He wished he could send his younger self to rescue this child, who wailed in a back room while his parents dined and danced. He wish he could take this Tim with him to a future where he would be doted on and loved, surrounded by a family to hold him when he cried. 

“Look at you.” It was all Bruce could do, look at the marvel in his arms. “You’re beautiful.”

Tim let out a grunt. Bruce chuckled. Tim’s eyes went wider, nearly crossing as he stared at Bruce’s face to discover the cause of the unfamiliar noise. Bruce obliged and chuckled again. Tim lunged forward and shoved a fist against Bruce’s cheek, then face-planted as the movement threw him off balance.

Bruce tutted, expecting tears and another fit, but Tim let out another determined grunt and pushed himself to arm’s length again.

“Already too stubborn for your own good.”

The hindpart of Bruce’s brain that was always on alert, always monitoring, was marking the steady passage of time. Every second spent in the past had the potential to spiral out into disaster. He had spent too long here, lost in time long faded. He needed to go home. But his son was here.

“I don’t begrudge you time with your parents.” Bruce didn’t know why he was talking, why he was saying these things to a child too young to understand or remember, but he couldn’t seem to stop. It was like the words were water pressed against the dike, leaking through every fissure. “I know you loved them, for all their… idiosyncrasies. And family is family.”

“Unh,” grunted Tim, and bounced slightly.

“But I would have like to have known you at this age,” Bruce admitted. “This age, and the ages that followed.”

Bruce didn’t spend a lot of time mourning over what could have been—there was too much to regret and too much good to lose—but it would be untrue to say he was never wistful over the prospect of what he couldn’t have. Tim learning to walk. Tim learning to run. ABCs and shoe-tying lessons, skinned knees and bedtime stories. For all that Bruce had experienced, there was so much he had missed.

His throat felt tight and small. “You grow into… into such a wonderful person.”

The words weren’t right. They never were. Bruce’s children were the emotions they stoked in his chest and the ripples they sent out into the world. Even the most skilled of poets couldn’t capture the sum of who they were. Bruce, with all his defects, had no chance at all.

‘Wonderful’ was the least Bruce could say about Tim, and he could say so with no false pride. Tim had come to Bruce burning bright with intellect, integrity, and passion. Bruce had had no hand in shaping that. The Drakes hadn’t either. Tim had made himself.

Tim blinked at him. Bruce chuckled and ran a finger down the bridge of his tiny nose, then caught his breath as Tim’s tear-streaked face bloomed into a smile.

Bruce wondered if it were possible to die of happiness.

Down the hall, a clock chimed the hour. In his arms, Tim gave an eye-scrunching yawn.

“Oh,” Bruce tutted, “this is too late for you, little one.”

It was late for him as well, too late, and far too early. It would be another thirteen years before a gawky Tim Drake with a thrust-out chin and fidgeting hands would arrive on Bruce’s doorstep.

Bruce looked to the door, still hanging ajar from the babysitter’s retreat. The girl had yet to reappear. Distant laughter rang out, muffled but mingled with the tinkling of piano keys.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as Alfred would say.

Bruce settled back in the rocking chair and ran his fingertips down the back of Tim’s head. “Time to sleep now. Come on.”

Tim gave another grunt, then plunged forward into Bruce’s chest to gum on his own fist. Whatever worked, Bruce supposed.

It was a holy time that followed, a sanctified string of stolen moments that Bruce mentally catalogued with aching precision. _We cannot go back_ is a universal truth. Time marched onward in an unflinching phalanx of unslowed minutes, each second pounding like the stamp of feet. Even with time travel, a moment lived was a moment burned, lost forever. So Bruce did his best to remember how it felt to have a tiny body breathe beneath his hand, to feel a small face rub sleepily against his shoulder, to smell the mix of clean scalp and baby shampoo.

Bruce paused in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, his shadow cast over the crib. What was one more indulgence in a night full of them?

Crossing the room once more, he bent over the rail of the crib and placed a kiss on Tim’s warm, soft cheek.

“Goodnight, love.”

Then the room faded, striped nursery walls fading to be replaced by the sterile chamber of the Watchtower.

Bruce stepped off the center pad.

“All went well?” Diana asked.

Bruce grunted and kept walking.

“Golly, Bruce, don’t drown us in details,” Clark teased.

Bruce didn’t stop. Ordinarily, he would have spent a few more hours in the Watchtower, writing his report while the details were still fresh in his mind and spending time in the company of his team. He did like them, secretly, and he thought most of the knew it, even if he hid it well. (Clark knew, and Diana was no fool. The others were up for debate.)

But there would be no lingering in the confines of the Watchtower tonight.

The Cave was quiet and empty when Bruce emerged from the zeta tube. The soft hum of the Batcomputer and the far-off chatter of bats was the only sound in the space. Bruce didn’t need to de-cowl, since a trip to the past required civilian clothes, but he did detour to the showers deeper in the Cave. Space always made his skin smell of sulfur and singed metal.

The Manor was just as quiet when Bruce finally made his way abovestairs. Alfred was there, little more than a touch from a hand extended from a plush robe, and then Bruce was alone again.

Though still and silent, the Manor was fuller than it had been in some time, and Bruce’s rounds took longer than usual. He didn’t mind. He went to Damian’s room first, treading heel-to-toe on socked feet, careful not to trip the whisper-fine internal trigger that would rocket his youngest awake, and pulled the askew sheet up to the boy’s chin before slipping out again.

Jason’s door was closed. Bruce touched his fingers to the wood, considering, then turned the handle just enough to see inside. A shadowed mound lay curled under the covers. That would have to be enough. He closed the door again and continued on.

Cass was spending the night at Barbara Gordon’s along with Stephanie, so Bruce skipped her room. As he walked, he pulled the phone from his pocket and typed in a quick 😘. A moment later, his phone dinged with the replied 😘👋😴.

Bruce smiled and put his phone away to push open Dick’s door. His eldest lay sprawled across his bed, open case files littered around his body. He didn’t stir as Bruce gathered the files, carefully replacing sheaths of paper and glossy shots of horrible things into their appropriate folders and stacked them neatly on the bedside table. Nor did he wake as Bruce unfolded the afghan from the end of the bed and pulled it over his body.

The light still shone from under the door at Bruce’s last stop. At least Tim had made it to the bed, though he still sat atop the covers, nose buried in his laptop.

“Mission go okay?” Tim asked without looking up.

Instead of answering, Bruce placed a hand on the laptop and gently closed the screen. “No screens in bed.”

“Aw, Bruce. I was working,” Tim whined.

Bruce set the laptop aside, then bent and pressed his lips to Tim’s forehead. “This is too late for you, little one.”

Tim blinked up at him, eyes red-rimmed and dry but glinting with curiosity. “Bruce?”

“Sleep,” Bruce commanded, a soft smile tilting his mouth. “Your computer will still exist in the morning.”

Tim grumbled, but his brow remained uncreased as he undid his blankets and slipped between the sheets. Bruce stood over him, hands tucked into his pockets, content to look. The same wide blue eyes studied him, sleepiness vying with wariness.

“You sure everything’s okay?” Tim asked at last.

“Yeah.” Bruce cleared his throat, banishing the rasp that had crept in. “Everything is fine.”

He bent once more, hand ruffling Tim’s hair as he pressed his lips to his son’s cheek.

“Goodnight, love.”

Tim mumbled his goodnight and rolled over onto his side, taking the blankets with him. Bruce turned off the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy day of birth to audreycritter. :) I'm only sorry I couldn't make this hobbit themed.
> 
> Title from "In My Arms" by Plumb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD-631ti5ho


End file.
